5 Things You Can Do to Help Leaders Embrace Coaching-Based Leadership Now

It’s possible you understand the value of coaching-based leadership, but your leaders don’t fully understand the benefits, and keep doing what they’ve always done. What now? Here are five things you can do to help leaders embrace coaching-based leadership now, based on this dialogue with Cylient CEO Dianna Anderson.

1. Real Talk About Real Coaching

There is a lot of confusion about what coaching is and what it isn’t. Real coaching—the kind that motivates people to take action—is based on igniting insights that point toward new and different ways to meet challenges. That’s the kind of coaching that supports the realization of potential. Help leaders understand the difference.

2. Tell the Story of Why It Matters

People make decisions with their emotions and rationalize them with their minds. Use stories and real-life examples to illuminate how the business will benefit from embracing coaching-based leadership. That means helping leaders understand how coaching-based leadership will enable them to meaningfully address the kinds of multifaceted changes and challenges they are currently facing.

3. Make It Meaningful for Them

Help leaders to see how they will be able to honor whatever is most important to them as a result of making this change. How will taking a coaching approach to day-to-day situations help them deliver the results they care about, such as being there for their people, making their numbers or getting their ideas heard? Use coaching approaches to paint that picture vividly, so it’s compelling.

4. Offer Support

People are more likely to risk making change when they feel that it is safe to do so. You can lower the risk of transitioning to coaching-based leadership by:

• Offering to be an “in the moment” coaching resource to leaders
• Providing training in coaching skills, such as Cylient’s Untying the Knot® approach to “in the moment” coaching and feedback
• Building learning communities where people can practice coaching, share stories, compare notes and offer support to each other

5. Be the Change

People understand what coaching is by experiencing it. That’s why it’s essential to take a coaching approach to inviting people to embrace coaching-based leadership. That means getting curious about why leaders are not taking the risk to change, having compassion for the challenges they are facing, and speaking and acting courageously in service of helping them safely and successfully making coaching-based leadership a way of life.

Contact Us

If you need help influencing leaders to embrace coaching-based leadership, contact us for help. We take a coaching approach to partnering with our clients, and help them shift their organization’s culture to a Safe and Seen coaching culture.